Thank you.
As I'm certain all the parliamentarians sitting around these tables know, the last few years have been very painful for the forest industry. Many towns have suffered the heartbreak of mills closing, and 55,000 Canadians lost their jobs.
Change is very painful, but there are still 600,000 Canadians who depend upon the forest industry. We have been at this committee many times and we've always delivered the same message. We implore parliamentarians not to try to freeze the status quo, not to try to help us by preventing change; the role of government is to help accelerate the transformation of Canada's forest industry so that we can secure those 600,000 jobs tomorrow and tomorrow and in the future.
We know the markets are there, and we know we can do it. We haven't been waiting for governments to do this for us. We have improved our productivity. We have increased our exports to China and India. In fact, we are the biggest exporter to China now from Canada. We have secured our environmental reputation with the boreal agreement. We have gone to a model of extracting maximum value from every tree so that now we are working from a biorefinery concept in which we get not just two-by-fours and pulp and paper, but also bioenergy, biofuels, and bioplastics from every tree. In other words, we have been doing the hard work of transforming the industry, work that is sometimes painful, sometimes quite joyous, but all necessary if we're going to keep these jobs.
In the past, parliamentarians have responded in the right way by supporting us with research and development funds, with export development funds, and with green transformation funds. What we are asking today, in the next budget, is to see a continuation of that support. And we have three Rs for you.
The first is to renew the existing programs that support R and D, market development, and environmental reputation. So renew those programs. We're not looking for more funding. We're not looking for big increases. We need those programs renewed, and we hope you take a close look at them and make certain they're well focused and revitalized.
Second, we want to see a recapitalization of the IFIT program. That's the forest industry transformation program. It's tremendously successful. We have seen some near miraculous transformations in many companies that are now applying to use that money, which will change the business model. It's a program that creates industry independence and competitiveness instead of dependence. So we'd like to see it recapitalized.
Third, we'd like to see the money that is now in the nextgen biofuels fund at SDTC re-profiled to be open to all bioenergy projects. That is stranded money, $500 million that's not being used anywhere near where it could be. We can take that money and use it to secure jobs across the country. We can use that money to switch from fossil fuels to bioenergy and reduce costs. It will have an immediate impact on employment in Canada's forest regions as well as long-term competitiveness, as well as Canada's clean and green energy profile.
So this is not a time for big new spending. It's a time for spending smarter, renewing the existing programs with a clear eye to how they could be fine-tuned, recapitalizing the industry transformation program, and re-profiling the money that is now there for next-generation biofuels so we can use them this generation to secure jobs in Canada's rural regions.
We have always said that the role of Parliament, the role of the government, is to support our transformation. The role of industry, of unions, of workers, of managers is to do the heavy lifting of transforming. We have tightened our belts. We have suffered the pain of consolidating factories. Unions have taken rollbacks in wages, as have owners and managers. We see huge potential in the future, with markets growing, and we hope that parliamentarians and the government will continue to support these necessary and profoundly useful programs.
Thank you.